 Hi there, I'm Sandy Allnach, artist and paper crafter, and today I'm going to compare a couple different sets of markers with the Art Impressions watercolor stamps. First I want to talk a little bit about the new stamp sets that are out for this season. They release lots of watercolor stamps and beautiful vases, more beautiful ones. There's another of the little flowers, so if you're into collecting flowers like I am, there's more. These little guys are adorable and I can't wait to play with them. I don't do that in this video but little gnomes that are going to crawl up onto mushrooms. There's bicycles and I love that they included them in different sizes and they always have beautiful pictures for inspiration on the covers of all of their stamp sets and cottages. These are like little sheds, potting sheds and stuff. So for those who are gardeners you can put lots of plants and flowers around them and make beautiful scenes. And then there are bridges. There's tiny bridges and big bridges in all different sizes so again we can make scenes with all different kinds of perspective. The last one I want to show you is the beach stuff. I will be doing a video on this as we get closer to summer if you're interested in learning more about how to do people and then they have these beautiful palm trees to play with as well. So look forward to that. Now there are two marker sets that I'm comparing here and these are the two set one and set two and you might want to know why you'd want one or the other and I'm going to talk about that. It's going to be working on a Canson XL watercolor pad and using my new Misti rulers. These are kind of cool rulers. This short one and a long one and you can use the center thing and I'm not going to use it here but they're in the center. There is a little slice and you can actually stick an exacto knife down there and get some really accurate cutting that way which I thought was a really interesting way to approach it. And of course it's a pink ruler so if everything in your room has to be pink the Misti rulers are fun. So there you go. Now I'm marking every three quarters of an inch because I wanted to make a quick swatch chart here. I don't make massive swatch charts. You might think that a hex chart person like me is really into swatching. I am not and I really don't get a whole lot out of it. I know my Tombow markers really well. I've used them for years and I don't necessarily need to do swatch charts but I wanted to do this for the color comparison between the two sets for you so that you can decide which one if either that you want. The only thing I found between these two that's common is nine six nine is the only color that's in both sets. And it's not a bad thing to have that one because if you do anything any of the art impressions watercolor that has either people in it or has buildings in it you're going to want to brown. So if you like the set on top which is more of the florally colors then that set has a lot more brights in it and the set at the bottom has more muted. And I'm going to show you a bunch of examples of a lot of these stamps these new stamps using one set and the other just so you can see the difference between them and what your images will look like because the overall palette that you choose is going to make a difference. So you saw me take a couple colors and put it on the edge of the stamp and then stamp it onto the paper. And now I've got a wet brush I did wipe it off on a paper towel so it's not soppy wet if if you use something soppy wet it's going to actually move the color a little too much you're going to lose all definition of your lines but you can just kind of work it around the edge of the image to give it a softer look. This particular set has little designs that you can put on the inside. I did not paint any water on the inside of this area so I could leave that clean for stamping that and then I can go in and in a controlled fashion I can water out some of those areas and make them look more like watercolor. I'm using a couple of other colors from set two this time and I'm going to approach it a little bit differently I'm going to put more water in it and show you a little bit about how you can do a different type of look and it really depends on you and what look you want. I always recommend taking a sheet of paper and just stamping the whole thing a whole bunch and try it with all different colors try doing it over and over again before you move to a card because then you'll get all stressed out and you don't want to be stressed out you want to know what it's what's going to happen and how much water to use and there you can see I stamped it on top that center design is stamped on top of wet paint or wet water and it blurted out a lot more. So I'm going to stamp all the rest of these but I'm not going to show you the the coloring on the stamp part because you kind of get that from what you've already seen if not you can watch any of my art impressions watercolor tutorials I have a good julienne of them it feels like now and now we'll do two bicycles and I love that they face different directions they're different sizes there's tiny ones in the set and these bigger ones as well and they all have you'll notice the basket not finished a lot of the different art impressions things even some of the buildings and stuff have parts of the stamp that's not finished it's because you're intended to put flowers there and when you put flowers and there's no top to it it looks like they're cascading over the edge of it which is really pretty. Now the sheds I decided to try to use some a little bit of the brown a little bit of the purple a little bit of the red from that happy floral colored set and it got really pink like that that red just doesn't feel like a brick red at all but then I tried with some darker colors and stuff here on from the other set and using a little bit of the red and the purple and the brown from that set and you get a very different color look from it a little more of a brick red type of color rather than being a more electric and as with any of these you can mix them with other things too if you have some browns in one of your sets of markers and you want to pick up one of these sets because you want the happy florals they all mix together just fine the tombows have always been and that's what the what brand this is I don't know if I mentioned that before the tombows have always been my favorite brand to use for art impressions watercolor I find that it's the best middle of the road brand in terms of how well it holds up lines and as well as how how quickly it melts out so I like that about this particular brand of marker all right now let's look at adding flowers to them and I'm just going to add a whole bunch of flowers to the first image of each one of these using the colors in set one and I'll just do it really quickly so that we can get on to the water coloring part which seems to be the hardest things that people try to understand how to do and they don't get it they they understand a little bit of the stamping but in terms of how much water and that sort of thing so I'll zoom in and show you a little bit more of that and here we go I'm just dabbing water in here now you can do each little flower at at a time if you want you can do one flower and then water it use the water on it and then move on to doing the next stamping and the next um the the next bit of water or you can stamp them all like I did and then just go and do the whole thing at once you may need to clean your brush more if you do it this way so that you don't contaminate too much color from one thing to another and this again is the way that you're going to be able to practice with it and know what's going to work best for you each person gets different results based on how they do it how they apply the water how they apply the color in some of the videos that I show you how to stamp one layer of it and then going and stamp more of it so you can add additional stuff to each one of these there is no right and no wrong and there are as many styles of art impressions watercolor as there are people if you look at instagram you will see that quickly now on something like this I wanted to make trees out of this little branch but I didn't have enough pigment there to do it with so I scribbled a little on a block and just added more easy enough to do with using these markers and again if you were trying this with perhaps your zig markers you might find the color just kind of washes away quickly it doesn't hold up and have this linear quality or you may find if you use distress markers that it holds too much of the lines and you know all different kinds of brands have different ways that they react so try your different watercolor markers and see what works I just tend to have a personal preference for these tombows and here I'm going to add a little bit in between each one of those areas on the bridge that are see-through matching the colors that are behind them and then I will add a little bit of blue to my palette my palette my block and create a long river underneath of my bridge you can also make it a bridge over a ditch or over flowers or over any old thing lots of different ways to use those bridges I realized I hadn't added more grasses here on the bottom of my bicycle and look how I did second generation stamping I stamped a little bit and then stamped again and again before re-inking it so that I could get a multicolor look get some light blue and some darker blue and then when I water it it gives it a slightly different effect and what you'll find is the more you try this the more you play with it the more you'll realize what your style is and what's going to work best for you you can do what I'm doing here just stamp a whole bunch of whatever the the image is whether it's the pot or the bicycle or something just stamp a whole bunch of them and then try different ways to add the stamping and the watercolor do them in different orders do them with different amounts of water do them with different brands of markers and write down what they were so you remember what that was and see what works for you your paper is also going to make a difference I use this kanson excel and usually something a little smoother it makes more people happy I also love using my my good arches for this my hot press or my or my cold press or my rough some people are more satisfied though with the hot press because it's a flatter paper I like the texture and it's all a personal preference it's all up to what you like the very best so practice with what you have and see what works the the way that you want it to work but you can see the difference between brighter colors in the first of each of these images and more of a vintage look in the secondary images and either one of these sets is going to make you happy I think because if you didn't see the first set you wouldn't be dissatisfied with the flowers in the second set it was my would be my personal opinion now I'm going to show you something else fun here with the sentiment set that they have and I've got it set up in my misty it's going to work best with a misty because you may need to re-stamp it and I've got my bicycle that's already been watercolored on my my paper and I'm going to color a couple different colors using my tombo markers again on the stamp itself I'm overlapping the colors a little bit and if you do end up overlapping colors you get a little color on your nib just scribble it off and the marker will work fine but look how beautiful that sentiment comes out in multicolors I did the same thing on all three of these and then just glued them on to a really basic car base it was super simple to to do when you've got a really beautiful design you don't have to have a lot of embellishing if you don't want to now storage of all the stamps I put mine in these cases I'll have a link for you in the supplies list I got these on Amazon because I really wanted to store my little flowers together my big flowers together my buildings together my fences together and that helps me to keep them all organized now some people want them all in the separate sets that's up to you to figure out your storage if you do but this is how I store mine and after that marathon video that's it for today I will see you guys again next time have a wonderful day